Sunday, December 14, 2008

I hate Gummy Bears

So remember my Bribery post from a couple days ago? How excited I was by my brilliant plan to use bribery (or positive reinforcement) to help train Allen to behave at meetings? Well, we tried it today at the meeting. It didn't work so well. In fact, the whole plan kinda blew up in my face.

We spent the entire first half of the meeting sobbing. Daddy tried to calm him down. Mommy tried to calm him down. Nothing worked. Finally Allen decided that he could go to the seat and sing the song. So I gave him a few gummy bears since he calmed himself down. Then he lost it again because he wanted the rest of the gummy bears. It took me another 15 minutes to calm him down from that episode. When we finally got back to the seat, he had missed his opportunity to raise his hand to answer "Noah." Though when someone else did, his eyes lit up, and he look at me and whispered "Noah!" At least he was listening.

For the remainder of the Watchtower he did pretty well. But then during the final song, he started messing around in Nana's purse. Therefore, during he prayer, he was not behaving (and was making noise opening and closing her eye glass case). As soon as we tried to pull him away, he screamed. I had to practically run out of the auditorium into the bathroom.

Needless to say, I was exhausted after the meeting. Utterly exhausted. So, loyal readers (all four or five of you), do you have any suggestions for how we can help Allen behave during the meetings? I welcome -- even plead for -- your suggestions.

xoxo,

P.S. I apologize for the lack of photos. I tried to post them, but Blogger is not letting me.

1 comment:

I like the positiver reinforcement idea. Maybe his reinforcer shouldn't be so immediate. Maybe he needs to be good through the meeting to earn a sticker at home. Maybe when he has 3 stickers he gets a treat (a new toy, a book, a new Tag story download.) Maybe when he has 5 he gets a bigger one. You know him better than I do, so you can modify this rough plan to suit his needs.